UTS Startups

For our community, this means we will be closing Building 16 (608 Harris Street). You can still access the Building 15 Collaboration Space (CB15.01.010), as long as you adhere to social distancing guidelines.

Being an entrepreneur means deciding what problem you want to solve, instead of being told.

Do you have something you want to solve?

UTS Startups is the home of student entrepreneurship at UTS. No matter what degree you are studying, we can equip you with the tools to become entrepreneurs. Whether it's with our inspirational events, masterclasses, or startup community, there's an entrepreneurship offering available for you.

In 2017, my nan unfortunately had a stroke, and watching my nan go through this journey, I learned about the struggles of both the patient and also the therapist that helped them. For my nan, she was only receiving care three times a week for 20 minutes each time, and that’s just not good enough for a patient trying to reconnect their brain to the rest of their body.

When I asked the therapist what was going on and why she wasn’t getting that care, they just said it was understaffed and they couldn’t hire more people to serve everybody. I thought well, what can I do as an engineer and my experience in robotics? And I thought well, how about we have something that physically gets in there and helps the patient through their rehabilitation process, and that’s what Tech Gym’s doing.

Being at UTS lets me access some of the best facilities around, especially being deep tech and in robotics, it’s not every day that I get experience to just play with a $30,000 robot or go and use hundreds of thousands of dollars’ worth of equipment to manufacture a prototype.

There’s lots of benefits to studying and working on my startup. It de-risks it for me, but it also gives me the benefits of learning at uni and then applying that straight into my startup. It also gives me the network that I need – there’s so many great founders around me in the community, and having access to that is probably one of the best parts.

I think UTS Startups just provides the support that I need to keep going. It’s the constant reminder that I’m not alone in this journey – I can walk down here and look around and see 20, 30, 40 people at a single instant at a time working really hard on their businesses and you just go, ‘Wow, like this is not just me.’

Out of the UTS Startup Awards we met our product development company that’s working with us now. From their Find Your Co-founder event, I actually found our business developer that we’re on-boarding at the moment and they’re going to come on board, which is huge, because we’ve got investment from investors coming in on the back of hiring that person, so that was a huge win for Tech Gym.

When you really are passionate, you’ve got to throw yourself into it. You’re not going to be an expert in everything at the start; the point is to learn and upskill yourself and surround yourself with the people who can actually teach you how to get into it.

I don’t just want to run a business because I want to be the founder of a company and the CEO of a company. I want to build a company that makes a real-world impact – it’s one of the reasons why I became an engineer in the first place, and this is one means of me completing that on my journey.

Be supported

Ready to launch your startup, or already running?

We accept applications from the idea stage onwards and are looking for ideas that are addressing a large market (something that is meaningful when it succeeds) and which are using technology to address the market quickly. All companies are great, but we use these entrance criteria to make sure the effort you put into launching a company will be worthwhile. We also require that one of the founding members of your team has been a UTS student in the last 12 months.

Regular check-ins with the UTS Startups team to track progress, identify needs, set goals and provide introductions to support and opportunities (including mentors, funding sources, potential customers and opportunities to find co-founders)

Access to offers from UTS Startups partners

Participation in regular pitch nights

Connection to industry events

Community building activities

Inspirational talks and workshops

Access to the UTS Startups online forum

Eligibility to enter the inaugural UTS Startups Awards, which will have cash prizes on offer

Inspirational events around UTS

Want to support UTS Startups?

Click here to register your interest in being connected to UTS Startups. Connections will be made during team check-ins, and when a challenge has been identified that you might be able to help with. Over time, repeat connections will be prioritised based on recommendations from our community.

More on UTS Startups

Led by UTS Director of Entrepreneurship and former Fishburners/Startup Muster CEO Murray Hurps, UTS Startups has been created to engage, inspire and connect startups across UTS. The goal is to exponentially increase the number of student-launched scalable startups at UTS, providing support for every student who wants to launch a venture, and for UTS to become the leading Australian university in the creation of those startups.

It is a founder-focused community, allowing students to see the opportunity in startups and begin their journey when it's right for them. It’s not about prescribing a path or formula, but instead creating the environment where UTS Startups are exposed to what they need to progress, both inside and outside the university.

Contacts and resources

Got a question, idea or request? Or need a venue for your hackathon, startup-focused meetup or roundtable event? Get in touch at startups@uts.edu.au .